Ping-Pong Diplomacy

In April 1972 The Cold War started its 26th year and had no end in the war in sight. On April 12th, a Pan Am 707 landed in Detroit, Michigan carrying the people's Republic of China's world champion Table Tennis team for a series of matches and tours in ten different cities all around the United States. 12 months earlier the era of Ping Pong diplomacy began and the American table tennis team got an invitation from their chinese colleagues to visit the people's republics for a World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya, Japan. The Chinese invited the United States because they felt that if they invited the United States they could shift their old rivalry into a new alliance in which the United States welcomed this invitation. Soon after this trip Nixon sent Secretary of State, Henry Kissiner, to Peking to arrange a Presidential visit to China. Nixon's journey seven months later, in February 1972, would become one of the most important events in U.S. postwar history. "Never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy," said Chinese Premier Chou En-lai.